


“Fell in love with a mess, is what you did”

by FeralCreed



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awesome Pepper Potts, F/M, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Tony Has Issues, Tony Needs a Hug, mentions of torture, past assumed threat of rape/non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 21:16:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8260732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeralCreed/pseuds/FeralCreed
Summary: Tony has a nightmare. Pepper is there for him.





	

“ANTHONY EDWARD STARK!” someone screams, and Tony jerks back from the motherboard he'd been working on. The jeweller's glasses he's wearing screws up his view of the room in all kinds of ways, and he winces at the unappreciated change as he reaches behind his head to get them off. He almost burns his hair off because he'd forgotten about the tool in his hand, but he remembers just in time and turns it back off to set it down. It's clear he's moving too slowly because Howard screams his name again, irritation clear despite the liquor slurring his words, and Tony flinches.

 

Full name is never good. Full name is a slap across his face and being locked in the closet until someone realises he's missing and goes to find him. And that's just if he gets off easy. The screaming is just a footnote since it's a daily – even hourly – occurrence. Neither of them can stand to be around each other for very long, even in public. It's only in front of the cameras that Howard pretends he was every anything but disgusted with his son, but it never lasts for long.

 

His father bursts through the door and the scruffy, homely concrete setting of the lab morphs into stone and damp and dust. It's not Howard, it's some faceless Ten Rings gunman, but the screaming doesn't need to be in English for him to understand it. That kind of hatred and disgust is universal. Yinsen's gone for some reason and Tony's anxiety spikes so high he stops being able to breathe for a moment. Where is he, is he hurt, is he dead, is Tony responsible for killing someone else that had just tried to watch out for him?

 

There's more yelling, a lot more, but Tony still can't understand a single word they're saying. Even if he knew the language, it's too fast and loud for him to tell what the individual words are, but he's pretty sure that they're all curses of some sort. His captors aren't the kind to ever be nice. One of them shoves him to his knees, body pressing close to him in a way that scares him instead of relieving the empty hole in his chest left by absence of humane touch. It's supposed to be an intimidation tactic and it works because Tony is terrified of what could happen to a lone guy who's incapable of defending himself and has a car battery attached to his chest. Last time they waterboarded him they'd gotten the connections wet and he'd gotten electrocuted, only to have to scramble to get it back to working order before his heart was perforated.

 

Needless to say, he gasps for breath when he's forced face-down on the floor, the rim of the arc reactor digging into his chest. His heart rate skyrockets from its already high rate, and he bites back a whimper of fear and pain. If anything happens to the reactor he'll die and he doesn't want that to happen while he's a worthless captive in an Afghanistan cave. There's so much more he was supposed to do, that he could have done, and it was never supposed to end here. _Please, please, please,_ he asks anyone who's listening. A boot heel grinds against his spine and a rattling cough is forced out of his lungs.

 

Instead of being rescued, his face is shoved against the damp stone, and the pressure on his chest moves the scene to the bottom of the ocean, trapped by debris of his exploded home. He'd been gasping for breath even before the gauntlet was pulled off his hand and grabbed him out from under the junk. And even after he was above the surface of the ocean, that same feeling of being unable to breath persisted, of having the reactor crushed against his chest in a way that made him feel like the metal casing was grating against his spine.

 

Even when the suit's in flight, he's gasping, and suddenly he's high, way too high, and ice is building over the suit and he's falling. He's falling, why is he falling, Jarvis, please, answer me, buddy. And for a moment his brain is going wild, and he wonders if he's managed to kill his AI too, but he can't have because it's a program and it doesn't die like that. It's the suit that's dying, and soon it'll be Tony, and his metal-cased fingers scrabble at the manual flaps on the armour.

 

“Wake up, Tony, please,” someone begs him, but he can't, he's sorry, he just isn't good enough. It isn't enough, everything he's done has never been enough. He's failing whoever's begging with him and he doesn't want to but he can't help it. Even if he wanted to do better, it wouldn't be possible, so he's going to make the person disappointed in him, make... Pepper? Oh god it's Pepper, please, why couldn't it have been anyone else? Tony's always tried harder for her than for anyone else. She's deserved it.

 

“C'mon, Tony, you can do this. I know you can. I believe in you.”

 

Oh god, what a mistake, she shouldn't, nobody should, Tony isn't the kind of man anyone should rely on for anything and- Tony screams himself awake and doesn't know how he avoids throwing up over the side of the bed. He's shaking, freezing even though his skin is slick with sweat, and his hearing is about as bad as someone twenty feet underwater. Pepper can tell he's having a panic attack even though he's incapable of doing so himself in his current state.

 

“You're safe. It's August twenty-third, almost three in the morning. We're in the penthouse of Avengers Tower. Nothing happened, you just had a nightmare. The weather outside's not half bad, and if it weren't for the high-rise lights, it would look like those _National Geographic_ spreads of national forests that are two pages. But even those pictures are nothing like what you've done to build up the Tower here, Tony. Done so well for yourself, for the team. Everyone is so proud of you but that's nothing compared to what I feel for you. Nobody else could have done all this, Tony. And it's just helped you build a safe place to live for us.”

 

Despite the fact that Tony's still shaking, Pepper is pretty sure he can hear her. It's the fact that she's talking and letting him know he's not alone that matters, not the actual words. She could be reading Tolkien or Us Weekly and get the same result, but after his panic attacks, Tony's delicate. There's no other word for it. He's emotional and falling apart and needs a strong, comforting presence to keep him from falling even further apart.

 

“P-Pep?” he stammers. He's panting, fingers curled into a death grip around the sheets, but he's too freshly out of it to be able to stand touch, so Pepper keeps her hands to himself.

 

“Right here, sweetheart, I promise,” she soothes him.

 

“'M so sorry. I can be better, I promise. I'll be good.” Tony's chest is heaving, like he's suffered through all the stages of cardiac arrest in the last few minutes he's been awake. He has to make a conscious effort to free the bedding, blood flowing back into his fingertips, and he cradles his hands against his chest. Pepper stretches her hand out, not touching him but giving him the option to do so himself. As soon as his eyes manage to focus enough that he recognises her hand, he latches onto it with both his own.

 

“Just relax, Tony. I've got you. You're safe.” Pepper winces a little at the crushing grip on her hand, but she knows it'll ease up in a few minutes when his terror begins to fade. And sure enough, just like every other time he's woken up from a nightmare-induced panic attack, her hand is freed within five minutes.

 

“God, I'm so sorry,” he apologises. Pepper takes the initiative and reaches for his hand, rubbing her thumb across his knuckles.

 

“Baby, you did nothing wrong, okay?” She's been battling his insecurities ever since they started dating and she's not about to stop now. He'll never believe her but that doesn't mean she'll stop trying. Tony is important to her even when he's falling apart. “Do you hear me?”

 

“Understood, ma'am,” he murmurs. She shifts down in bed and he nuzzles against her, craving any type of contact as much as the air he's breathing. Tony has always been tactile even when he isn't scared, and she tells him what she's doing before she puts a hand in his hair. He moans at the touch, letting out a huge sigh as he wraps an arm around her waist. “I'm so sorry, Pep.”

 

“Sorry for what?” Pepper's itching to tell him that he doesn't have to apologise, that he's innocent of whatever he thinks he's done. But even though she's given into that impulse a couple times in the past, it's only ever led to more arguing and bickering, which not only stresses Tony but harms their relationship. Neither of those are good so she's learned to just let him ramble out his guilt and self-deprecation until he runs out of things to say.

 

“Letting myself be trouble. Waking you up. Being annoying. Never being good enough to stop what happened in the first place. Just being me in general because I'm loud and rude and there's no reason for me to ever be able to have a woman like you.”

 

“Kittens?” Pepper asks, smiling when Tony's nose wrinkles adorably in confusion. “When you brought home an entire box of kittens because you wanted to make sure they got to good families. Remember that, a couple weeks ago?”

 

“Very loud and annoying, they were,” he mumbles.

 

“And you were kind enough to go out of your way during a crazy week to take care of a few sick orphans that nobody else would have expected to live.”

 

“Or stupid enough.”

 

“Well, if that's stupidity, then you're a very intelligent idiot. But that's the person I fell in love with, Tony. Someone who saves kittens at their own expense. And spends days holed up in his lab making sure he can keep his family safe. Throws thousands of dollars' worth of gifts and cash at people to win their affection. Keeps ridiculous hours because he gets so excited about a new project or tv show that he forgets what year it is.”

 

“Fell in love with a mess, is what you did,” Tony points out. His breathing starts to even, though his hands are still trembling, and despite the fact that he's trash talking himself, Pepper is glad that he's starting to physically recover.

 

“Yes,” she agrees. Because even though she wishes she could contradict him, that's true. Tony is a mess half the time, and the other half he's either high on Science!, blowing something up, in public and pretending that he's okay, or with her or Rhodey and actually okay. Pepper has overlooked a few of his rough spots and sugar-coated a couple small things for the sake of keeping his sanity intact, but she's never blinded herself to the truth. Tony is the biggest mess she's ever seen but she loves him despite it all and that will never change unless he does.

 

The fact that she's so casual about admitting that seems to be enough to make him go quiet for a bit. He is exhausted, more tired than when he went to sleep, but whether he gets any more rest is up for debate. If she wasn't here, he'd bolt for the lab. Both of them know that without question. Sometimes he does anyway, too afraid to face any possibility of revisiting the worst parts of his life more than once in a night. From the rare times he's spoken about it, she completely understands why, she just wishes he wouldn't run as a first resort.

 

“Do you want to stay?” she asks quietly, her hand moving to cup his jaw.

 

“I _want_ to, I just...” His voice trails off and she nods, understanding him perfectly.

 

“No matter what, I love you,” she tells him, and he sobs in response. She pulls him close and doesn't say a word as he soaks the front of her t-shirt. It's half likely she'll have bruises on her hips from how tight he's holding her right now, but they could be there from worse reasons. He's never intentionally hurt her, despite a few accidents, and she knows this is just him being scared and stressed. But even with the emotional release, it only takes a couple taps at his hand for him to loosen his grip.

 

Pepper sits up, shifting so Tony's shoulders are resting across her thighs, and presses a kiss to the top of his head as he cries. He's clinging to her like an orphaned koala and she can't do much more than make vague soothing noises as he falls apart. They both know he hates showing her the 'broken' (his label) side of himself and that they won't speak of it in the morning.

 

But for now, it's just the two of them in a bed full of blankets, and Tony needs comfort. Pepper pulls a couple throws up around his shaking shoulders, relieved that he grabs double handfuls of one and pulls it around him like a shawl. He curls up in her lap, not managing to fit until she hangs one leg over the side of the bed. Neither of them really mind. After a dozen long minutes, Tony stops crying and just rests his forehead against her shoulder. Ever since Howard hit him for crying too loudly, he's been quiet with his grief, and Pepper isn't sure that he's stopped for a few moments.

 

Regardless of his current emotional state, it's Pepper's official opinion that he needs plenty of affection and she gives it to him. He whimpers as she touches him, her fingers rubbing over his back and shoulders as she works at getting the knots out. She stays away from the patchwork of scars around her chest, not wanting to risk such a sensitive area in the aftermath of a panic attack. But Tony relaxes under her hands anyway, and by the time she's got most of the tension out of his shoulders, he's half asleep again.

 

Getting him to lay down without waking him up is something she's gotten plenty of experience doing. She pulls a few blankets up to cover herself and snuggles close to Tony, slipping a foot between his calves and an arm across his waist. He sighs at the touch and shifts toward her, breath flitting across the hollow of her collarbone. In the morning they'll pretend this never happened. Tony will wordlessly ask her to help him use foundation and concealer to hide the circles under his eyes so he'll look all right at his board meeting, even though he'll wear sunglasses and a grin like anti-paparazzi armour. Pepper will do it and block out at least ninety minutes in the afternoon to find him for lunch and curl up with him, making sure he isn't pushing himself when he should be at home.

 

The moment they have now is all theirs, though. It's hard loving Tony. Pepper knows she's no saint herself but Tony has always been far worse. He denied his problems for so long that they only ended up compounding and making things worse for everyone, but frankly, Pepper has seen some messed up stuff and a broken, hurting man desperate for anyone to love him is not something she would shy away from under any circumstances. At times they need space or Tony makes her angry enough that she sleeps on the couch or he nearly dies in the field and wakes up in the hospital with broken limbs. But despite his faults, he's hers, and she'd take every sleepless night in the world over not having him by her side.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I just have a lot of feels for these two okay I apologise because I don't know what this is but it's like 6.30AM and I should be in bed so here ya go.


End file.
